


No Longer Calling

by Pookaseraph



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 14:34:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pookaseraph/pseuds/Pookaseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donald finds himself comforting Keen again after some bad news. </p><p>Spoilers for "General Ludd"</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Longer Calling

Donald wasn't an idiot. He could tell what was going on from the first phone calls. Agent Keen, for all her occasional faults, her inexperience, and her emotional investment in her cases, was a good agent, and it wasn't like her to be so distracted. Once Keen had asked Director Cooper for time off in the middle of a national crisis, Don knew it was bad. The phone calls peppered their pursuit around DC and even as they made their final run on the local airstrip that Reddington had pointed them to; Don didn't say anything, didn't offer meaningless verbal comfort, because it would mean nothing if she didn't make it home in time to see her father's final hours.

She was his partner. No matter his feelings for her occasional lapses, she was his partner and after he had Wolfe secured, he glanced up and saw... that it was already too late. Keen was on the phone still, with Tom in all likelihood, and he watched as her face went from shocked, to blank, and then the moment when the dam broke and she started to cry against their van.

Damn.

Don might have been particularly vicious with the cuffing in response. It had been ages since Don had had to feel anything like that, but he couldn't help the sympathetic twinges when he saw Keen like that, distraught, and he made sure he turned Wolfe away so he wouldn't get to witness the private made public. He was a Fed, he knew how to project the air of 'nothing to see here' at the officers with him, and he waited until they had started to move off before he stepped over to where Keen still hadn't pulled herself together.

"Keen?" He asked, tentative, unsure if she wanted him there. They were still a little raw from him reporting her, even if she knew he was right. His presence might have been unwelcome.

She leaned into him in a moment, hands against his lapels, face buried in his shirt and tie, and his hands went to their own place on her back, at her shoulders, and then pulled her even closer as she continued to cry. It should have been more awkward. Keen wanted Tom, not him, this wasn't about some psychopath kidnapping her, this was her father... but it fit. Don found it harder and harder not to think on that too closely.

These moments of weakness, not infrequent, reminded him of the first day he met her. She'd said that the men of the mobile psych unit called her 'sir', called her a bitch, and it was impossible to think of her that way when she could be so vulnerable mixed in with her hardness. They must have been a bunch of immature assholes if they couldn't see the strong woman underneath.

"I can finish this up, Keen," he said. "If you need to go, go."

"I..." She shook her head in his chest, unintentionally nuzzling there a bit, making him need to remind himself he was a professional, damn it. "I'd rather not leave two piles of unfinished business. I can finish this."

"I'll drive."

Don tried not to notice that the phone remained silent all the way back to the Post Office. There was nothing more to say.


End file.
